During 1993 a small group of amateur Italian genealogists used to exchange messages on the GEnie Online Service. Among that group, Tom Briggs, John Cusimano, Tony Schiro and Keith Macaluso used to complain to each other about two main issues. There really wasn't very much participation in the discussion group and the GEnie personnel used to monitor the discussions and chide the participants if the discussions strayed off pure genealogy. The participants liked to branch out into discussions of Italian music, food, history, culture, etcetera - and the GEnie monitors wanted them to discuss Italian food in the Italian food discussion group and other subjects in their own discussion group. This was not satisfactory to this little band of rebels.
Tom Briggs obtained internet access outside of Genie and suggested to the others that on his new internet service provider he could set up a group mailing address. He would put each of their internet addresses into the group address and then everyone could send messages to him and he would re-send them to the group mailing address, that way the discussions could be carried on outside of GEnie. This would allow them to solicit new participants from the entire internet community and would let them discuss any aspect of Italian history and culture they wanted.
Tom Briggs named his internet group mailing address, "P.O.I.N.T. in E-Mail" and kicked the idea off with the following message:
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 1994 21:12:25 -0500 (EST)
From: Thomas Briggs, briggs@clark.net
To: "P.O.I.N.T. in E-Mail" [A.SCHIRO@GENIE.GEIS.COM, J.CUSIMANO2@GENIE.GEIS.COM, lisab@gomez.jpl.nasa.gov, M.MACALUSO@GENIE.GEIS.COM, sjf@jsoft.com.
Subject: Announcing P.I.E.
This idea began from an e-mail exchange I had with Susan Frederick, who I met because of ROOTS-L. I had complained about not always getting a good response from POINTers when you write snail mail and said that I was more than inclined to respond with e-mail because it was so quick and clean. I then wondered why POINTers couldn't keep in touch better via e-mail and maybe we ought to write to Dr. Militello and announce the formation of Pursuing Out Italian Names Together in E-Mail (P.I.E.) as a variation of P.I.P. (POINT in Person).
This first message is being done using a personal distribution list, but I am going to look into setting up a mailing list, which I believe would allow each person on the mailing list to mail e-mail to the list and then all members of the list would receive the mail. The student's at my daughter's college did it, so I hope I can figure it out.
In the meantime, let me introduce everyone.
Susan Frederick #94 - Phoenix, AZ
Lisa Barge
John Cusimano #1417 - Edmonds, WA
Tony Schiro- Seattle, WA
Keith Macaluso #1760 - Cherry Hill, NJ
Tom Briggs #1383- Rockville, MD
Lisa and Tony- I don't know your POINT # and a quick look in the directory did not help.
Everyone is a POINTer. Until a mailing list is set up, I believe each of us could reply to this first message and include the CC recipients. That would make it easy to keep everyone in.
If I send a note to Dr. Militello and invite anyone with internet access, and than can include Compuserve, Genie, Pridigy, etc, users, to write, that can result in some immediate joining, assuming we are not the only POINTers who can or do access the internet for e-mail.
Let me know what you think. It can stop now, if it is not a good idea, or we can see if it grows.
-Tom
From 1 Feb 1994 to about 1 June 1994 Tom Briggs received all the e-mail and then re-sent each one out to his personal PIE distribution list. Since Tom was due to be transferred to Germany in mid-June he wrote to the list that PIE would be down for a month or two while he packed up his PC, shipped it to Germany, and then tried to find an internet provider over there. Susan Frederick replied that she would be willing to try to make PIE function on a real mailing list, instead of the personal distribution list method Tom had been using. Susan did not want to see PIE down for so long and her participation in the computer business let her try to set up the mailing list with the assistance of her husband Gary Frederick.
The rest is, as they say, history.